A wireless communication system for communicating with mobile stations is typically divided up into a plurality of cells. While a mobile station is in one cell, it is common for the mobile station to monitor channels belonging to other nearby cells, particularly in anticipation of being handed-off to another cell. Typically, the mobile station does not monitor all possible channels, but instead monitors the channels on a so-called neighbor list. This neighbor list is typically provided to the mobile station on the control channel of a current cell by the base station serving that cell. Thus, each base station transmits a neighbor list to the mobile stations that are using that cell, based on a stored neighbor list for that cell. As cells are added or deleted, the contents of the stored neighbor lists need to be updated to reflect the new arrangements, so that the mobile stations are provided with correct neighbor list information. Moreover, cells may become disabled for various reasons such as hardware failure, power failure, low power supply, etc. Lengthy cell outages disrupt network services unless mitigated.